I’ve been working for three decades. In that time, we’ve had some legitimate financial crises such as 9/11, 2008, and COVID.
Those aside, what I’ve mainly witnessed is people who fail in business or lose their job via incompetence never say, “Man, I should’ve hired a legitimate bookkeeper and stopped using my corporate card to cut rails in the strip club bathroom,” or, “Man, maybe I should’ve shown up to work more than twice a month and maybe I shouldn’t have slapped the receptionist on the ass when I did show up.”
No. It’s always, “My business failed and I lost my job because of the economy”
“The economy” is some great catch all bogeyman scapegoat that has very little basis in meaning when used in daily conversation, especially as it pertains to personal finance.
We can talk about corporatocracies or consolidation of wealth or two tier justice because those things are real and should be addressed, but they are rarely what people are referring to when they blame “the economy.”